1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a plasma display panel, and more particularly to a method and an apparatus of driving a plasma display panel that is adaptive for not only consuming uniform power, but also making pictures switched continuously.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a PDP driving apparatus displays a picture on the PDP by controlling the number and an arrangement of sub-fields. As the number of the sub-fields decreases, a sustain period, i.e., the number of sustains, increases to display a bright picture, i.e., a picture with high brightness, on the PDP. However, there is contour noise seriously generated in a moving picture that is displayed by a method of a few sub-fields, so as to deteriorate a picture quality. On the other hand, if the number of the sub-fields increases, the contour noise appearing in the moving picture is reduced remarkably to improve the picture quality, but the brightness of the picture displayed on the PDP decreases. This is because the sustain period, i.e., the number of sustains, is reduced due to the increase of a reset period and an address period as much as the increase of the number of the sub-fields.
Further, in the PDP driving apparatus, power dissipated for a discharge increases as a screen area of the PDP increases. Due to this, it might be possible that the PDP driving apparatus dissipate more than a threshold power of its own. In order to solve this problem, there has been a method that an area is divided into three or four stages through trial and error to reduce the number of the sustains appropriately, so that a power consumption is made to be within a range of a threshold or less. However, in such a area division method, the number of the sustains is not continuously changed like a staircase. That is, the number of the sustains is discontinuously changed in the area division method. There appears a noise in a form of flicker on the screen at the moment when the number of the sustains is changed discontinuously.
As a result, in the conventional PDP driving apparatus, it is inevitable that the power consumption may not only swerve from the threshold power range, but there may be also a discontinuous switching of the picture caused by the discontinuity of the number of the sustains.